Fathers Day
is always a strange day for me. My Daddio has been gone for twenty six years. I
think about him every day.
He was very involved
with the neighborhood and its people. He was always helping people out when
they had a problem. He was an accountant and he built up a big practice of
people from the neighborhood. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. We couldn’t
walk down the street without someone stopping us to say hello or to ask a
question. Now that happens to me. I know all the old timers and have met a lot
of the new people in the neighborhood. But I don’t have the patience that my
Dad did for some of these people. I mean I am always polite but I don’t want to
hear everyone’s problems. Because that is what they want to tell you.
Because my
Dad was always helping people they came to expect it from him. When he got sick
many of them dropped him because he couldn’t do anything for them anymore. Not everyone
but plenty of them. I tell you it was an eye opener for me. But he taught me
well. He used to tell me “When you do something do it because you want to. Don’t
expect any credit or gratitude because that is few and far between. Do it
because it is the right thing to do. The charitable thing. Always help out if
you can. But do it because it is in your heart. Then you won’t go wrong.” The funny
thing was that the more powerless someone was the more they appreciated the
help. It was the big shots that were the ungrateful bastards.
I took his
advice. That is why I am very friendly with all the working people in the
neighborhood. The deli clerks. Waiters and waitresses. The dude who washes the vegetables
in the Gourmet food store. I had to run to the stores this morning to get the
food that the wife was going to bring over her father’s house. I have to stay
in the store and I wanted her to go spend some time with her Dad. Everyone
wanted the good ravioli’s and bread and cookies from Brooklyn so I went to the
stores before they left. The funny thing is that I knew every worker in each
store and they knew by name. They asked how I was feeling and if there was
anything they could do for me. One of them offered to cook me up a big batch of
prosciutto balls if I could eat them since nobody was making them anymore. It
made me feel great. Because it reminded me of my Dad and how people used to act
toward him when he was out and about.
I take it
all with a grain of salt but I still am glad that I can have that relationship
with the little guys. The owners of the stores and the yuppie hipster assholes
that are in line I could give a shit about. It is the workers that I care about
and am proud to call my friend.
Just like my
Daddio. I miss you and I love you and I think about you every day.
17 comments:
Trooper ... I think our fathers were cast from the same mold. The words you attribute to yours are the same ones I heard from mine. Do what you can and believe is right. That's it. First step in all that, in his words, was always acknowledge and cherish the everyday people who "do for you" ... care for them and they will care for you.
I'm sure he'd be proud.
Somewhere I need to say today, since I can't be close to my closest friend for "medical reasons" (he just took that nice 150 mg radio-active pill for thyroid cancer post surgical removal...his dosage requires 5-7 days cloture, so to speak) when I know he reveres his father, a veteran of the resistance in WWII a man who raised several sons. We always celebrated his Dad on this day, and his favorite General of all time, Geo S Patton.
Thing is I do not care about any radiation exposure. I have already had cancer and survived, for now. I am going over to visit tonight regardless, if he will let me. Judi already went over today (so far no call that he resisted)....to re-assure him because he could not celebrate the Children's Mass today as usual...his favorite mass, or at least mine and the one I attend.
I apologize if I interrupted here.
Trooper and Aridog, Same w/ me. It was a generational thing in large part. Thanks for talking about your dads. We were blessed.
Yep, my Dad was similar. Very forgiving, gregarious, and patient toward those less fortunate.
I try to follow his footsteps, but many people annoy the hell out of me. I try to hide and overcome it. Which is my Dad's influence.
Happy Fathers Day guys.
My father is a psychotic. For most of my life he was absent. In high school, when I ran away from my mother's abusive husband, I ended up living with my grandmother (his mother), and by happenstance, so did my father. I gave him a chance, which he squandered. I started to have my own (emotional) problems around that time and when I confided in him he told me to "go ahead and kill myself, here's a rifle". My aunt Patricia, his sister, suffered from emotional problems as well and confided in him. He told her the same thing, "go ahead and kill yourself, here's a rifle" - and she blew her brains out, in 1972, three years before I was born. Now my father digs in walls looking for transmitters and says his queer son is dead. Or at least he did when I last heard about him 5 years ago. Perhaps he's dead now.
Fatherhood is not necessarily determined by heredity, but by honor and love. Though I was too stupid to know it at the time, my grandfather, my father's father, was there for me when I was a child. He and my grandmother looked after me when my mother was at work, before and after school, during the summers. They encourage me, tolerated me, loved me, understood me. They took me to auctions, they took me to the PX and Commissary with them (he was a retired Lt Colonel in the Army). They bought me art supplies and my first bicycle. As someone told me later, I was at last a ray of sunshine in their lives, their first grandchild, after the misery of their daughter's suicide.
And my uncle, my biological father's brother, their son, was the other father in my life. He was an artist, a poet, a musician, a bohemian, who finally made a living in New York City as a manager for TIAA-CREF. Though he only visited on some weekends when I was growing up, he was my link to a different kind of life... the life of an artist (of sorts). He (and my grandparents), literally and figuratively, saved me. He helped me get into college in NYC, I even lived with him and his series of terrible girlfriends for my junior and senior year. He helped me when I descended into depression, helped me when I was down, helped me whenever I needed it. He helped me when I got into Yale, a complete and hilarious anomaly in my family. I got him an apartment in my building when I moved back to NYC in 2002, the same building I was evicted from last year. And when he became ill in 2006, and was dying of cancer, I took care of him as best I could. I took him to chemotherapy, I cleaned for him, I tried to make him happy, until the cancer invaded his brain and made him forget who I was.
He, and my grandfather, were fathers to me and these are the men I remember on Father's day. Like Trooper York, it's with great sadness and infinite love that I remember the men who truly fathered me.
It is very moving to read the comments posted on this topic. Very moving.
Thank you for posting what is held in your hearts.
@Pallidian/
Although your sexual lifestyle is not one I would wish anyone to emulate, I have always regarded you as a thoughtful and insightful person whose views on the basic sociocultural times we live in as being very much congruent with my own, and you don't post here often enough for my likings. I'm saddened to hear of your current plight and understand your situation. Unfortunately due to the demands placed on my wife and I by an institutionalized adult son we are not in a financial position to help--we can barely help ourselves and our son. But God Speed and my thoughts are often with you...HANG IN THERE!
Tony Gwynn died. A great player and a good man. Saw him coach many games @ SDSU. You could see the respect players had for him.
Palladian, Thanks. I hope you have real people in your life w/ whom you can confide. We virtual people care for you, but we all need flesh and blood people in our lives.
Thanks for your heartfelt contribution Evan. We miss your participation and your perspective. It is very true that the man who can serve as a father to you is not always your biological father.
I hope that we can hear from you more often.
Well said Trooper. You dad sounds like he was a real mensch, as ripic would say.
Palladian, thanks for sharing. Well said too.
Trooper, I remember this thread from a few years ago and you said very supportive things then and made me your "cousin". I have not forgotten that and am very grateful.
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